I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back.

Certainly the people who are close to me are happier. They feel freer.

There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice.

Time is change; we measure its passage by how much things alter.

If you look at the recent Nobel Prize winners, one couldn't say that the work didn't matter and the political commitment did. Who had ever heard of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz? He is not politically involved. Octavio Paz is a great poet, also not politically involved. The Nobel Prize is for literature, for the quality of work over the years.

One can't measure how a mood of confidence comes about.

I decided that I wanted nothing to do with South African government television while any of my fellow writers were banned and couldn't speak publicly.